Orders of the Day — Growth of Bureaucracy

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 29 January 1968.

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Photo of Mr James Dance Mr James Dance , Bromsgrove 12:00, 29 January 1968

I will not give way.

The Government have an extremely wrong conception of the usefulness of travel from the national point of view. There should be a cut in Government travelling expenses. At no time have Ministers travelled more extensively and less effectively than at present. The usual result of their wanderings has been to make Britain look slightly ridiculous. We all realise the immense need to increase our export effort. With that in mind, I have made it my duty to talk to many large exporting companies and see if there is any further assistance we could give them. I find that there is a constant complaint, and one that I think is very fair, from leading exporters, many of whom have to spend more than three months a year in other countries, and that is that they are not allowed to take their wives with them—unless entirely at their own expense. Yet they read not once but many times that the Foreign Secretary's wife accompanies him. [HON. MEMBERS: "Cheap!"] No, it is fair. The Foreign Secretary may argue that she contributes to the success of his work, and that may be perfectly true, but so do the wives of my exporting friends, who go so far as to say that in the Americas the social side of life is so important that without one's wife one is not entertained by the head of a corporation or concern but passed on to the No. 2. It strikes me that if the Government are so profligate in spending our money they should give some thought to making stern cuts in the expenses of non-productive Ministers and bureaucrats and invest a little more in the success of our all-important exporters.

I am informed that the iniquitous Selective Employment Tax, apart from being a ogreat disincentive to everybody, costs some £2 million to collect and that the Land Commission also costs some £7 million. What the cost of the Transport Bill, which is certainly the most vicious most vindictive measure against private enterprise, will be I dread to think. But it will be an immense sum.

A further glaring example of wastage of time and money is the scandal of the replacement of investment allowances by investment grants, a measure typical of the Government and their muddled thinking. Each grant has to be checked against a list of conditions some 36 pages long, and I am told that the Board of Trade requires 11,000 staff to administer the grants, whereas under the Conservative system only about 50 man years' work for assessment was required.